BLOOPER PLANET!
Host releases endangered baby turtle on to the beach – and it’s eaten by a seagull
IT should have been a heartwarming highlight of Blue Planet Live – a group of baby turtles scampering out to the sea on a beach.
Unfortunately, Mother Nature hadn’t read the script.
Seconds after the endangered green sea turtle babies emerged from birth nests a seagull swooped and grabbed one in its beak as presenter Liz Bonnin spoke to camera.
Miss Bonnin, 42, had told viewers they would be watching five babies on Heron Island, Australia. She said: ‘We’ve watched them come up to the sands of Heron to nest and we’ve also had the great privilege of watching precious new lives – little hatchings – emerging from nests and making it in the big blue.’ Then she watched as a conservationist placed the turtles on the sand.
Miss Bonnin spoke of how important it was to protect the ‘precious individuals’ from predators. She said: ‘They have no mothers to look after them – they are left to their own devices, to the elements, to the predators that await them and also to ever increasing man-made threats.’
But as the newborns headed to the sea, a gull snatched one and strutted along the beach behind the presenter. Some viewers said they were ‘traumatised’ by the scenes in Sunday night’s BBC1 episode. Jo Slater posted online: ‘Traumatised by the seagull picking up and walking off with a turtle hatchling as your broadcaster spoke to camera about the importance of preservation and protecting them from predators!’
Philip Briscoe, from Glasgow, wrote: ‘Oh no! As they were letting the last baby turtles go into the sea a bloody seagull comes and nabs one for dinner – and then has the cheek to walk past camera with it!’
Miss Bonnin wrote on Twitter: ‘ These hatchlings are part of the food web here and the silver gulls need to feed their newborn chicks too. Hard to watch but we can’t do anything about it.’ The BBC said the survival rate for turtles is very low with just one in 1,000 making it to adulthood.